Last Thursday, many of you joined Atlanta Bicycle Coalition staff for our third quarterly stakeholder briefing. To everyone who spent the evening with us — thank you! We enjoyed sharing our 2020 accomplishments and 2021 priorities, and receiving valuable feedback on our 2021 City of Atlanta and Atlanta Board of Education Policy Agenda: creating a more equitable city through mobility. 

If you weren’t able to attend, we’ve got you covered with a full recap, including Q&A review.

Recap

In non-pandemic times, we typically celebrate our 2020 accomplishments and unveil our 2021 priorities in-person with you all at our annual Blinkie Awards Party. Even though the Blinkies will be held in June this year — celebrated as an interactive virtual party — we’re glad we had the opportunity to celebrate our 2020 accomplishments and share 2021 priorities with you at the briefing.

To kick things off, Sagirah took us through the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition’s 2020 accomplishments

A few highlights from last year’s accomplishments:

• City adopted Vision Zero ordinance with new default 25 mph speed limit covering 75% of Atlanta’s streets
• Advocated for Tactical Urbanism permit — City launched in fall 2020
• Implemented Community Advocates for Safe Streets program
• Built coalition that advocated for the CDC to include needs of people riding transit within COVID-19 reopening guidelines 
• Participated in Department of City Planning  redesign of a portion of Peachtree Street as a shared space
• Prompted Atlanta Public Schools’ Tuskegee Airmen Global Academy to adopt active transportation policies and embed transportation advocacy in project-based learning curriculum
• Garnered support from 19 partner advocacy organizations for Vision Zero, reduced speed limit, changes to police pursuits, and tactical urbanism policy campaigns
• Hired Senior Development Manager through a grant provided by Mailchimp

Next, Haydée covered our 2021 priorities. One of this year's priorities is to develop the resources and capacity to advocate for pedestrian and transit issues — during the briefing we announced that we've entered into talks with PEDS to consider a merger.

We look forward to making streets measurably safer, inspiring more people to choose sustainable transportation, holding our leaders accountable, and growing inclusively and sustainably through the following tactics this year:

Throughout the first two months of 2021 we’ve been focused on developing our 2021 City of Atlanta and Atlanta Board of Education Policy Agenda: creating a more equitable city through mobility (currently in draft form). We were eager to share this policy agenda with our stakeholders and hear community feedback, and enjoyed the lively conversation — you can read our full policy agenda here and catch up with community discussion and poll results in the recordings.

Our City of Atlanta policy agenda focuses on safety, transit and affordability, and funding. You can learn more about our recommendations and how stakeholders ranked them for each section:

Our Atlanta Board of Education policy agenda is geared toward making sure Atlanta’s K-12 students can move safely, easily, and sustainably to and from school:

We concluded the briefing answering stakeholder questions and thanking you for your continued support and involvement. You can find a full overview of questions and answers throughout the briefing by clicking below:

Thank you to all stakeholders who attended and shared your opinion on our policy agenda! We’re currently processing your suggestions as well as feedback from our partner organizations. We look forward to publishing the official policy agenda soon and most importantly, carrying out its recommendations to create a more equitable city through mobility. As we continue in our new strategic direction to advocate for all forms of sustainable transportation rather than bikes only, you can join us on our mission to reclaim Atlanta’s streets as safe, inclusive, thriving spaces for people to ride, walk, and roll by donating today.